Syria

Thursday October 16, 2014

Sometimes it takes a while for the PR folks to come up with a branding scheme for another US war.

In the recent past, we had Desert Shield, which gave way to Desert Storm, when the US first attacked Iraq in 1990. Very exciting, like a storm in the desert. Then came "Operation Iraqi Freedom." A little less dramatic but it got the point across: "we come to give you freedom whether you want it or not." As it turned out, there was little real freedom produced by Operation Iraqi Freedom.

Now, two months after the US began bombing Iraq again -- and now Syria as well -- Pentagon branders have agreed on a name for President Obama's determination to "degrade and ultimately destroy" the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (or Islamic State, or ISIL, or whatever you want to call it).

Tuesday October 14, 2014

Remember the Khorasan Group? It was only three weeks ago, when the Obama Administration was desperate for any kind of legal justification for its plan to begin bombing Syria, that we began hearing about a horrifically dangerous group that was worse than ISIS and was in the final stages of planning an attack on the United States.

Absent a threat from Syria, absent Congressional authorization, absent a UN resolution, any US missile strike on Syria would be illegal, an aggressive move characteristic of a rogue state. If a story line could be crafted that there was an imminent threat to the United States, however, the president would have Constitutional authority to thwart the attempted strike.read on...

Friday October 10, 2014

How much is Obama's new war on Iraq and Syria going to cost? If you believe the woman who was right about the costs of the last US war on Iraq, Harvard Professor Linda J. Bilmes, it's going to cost a fortune.

In a critically important article Professor Bilmes wrote for the Boston Globe this week, the author of The Three Trillion Dollar War (with Nobel Prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz) points out that although the US has already spent approximately one billion dollars thus far on President Obama's plan to "degrade and destroy" ISIS, the price tag is going to climb steeply —and quickly — from there.

Direct costs of the president's plan will likely be on the order of $22 billion per year, but that is only the start.read on...

Tuesday October 7, 2014

There is an interesting dimension to the ongoing circumvention of the Constitution over our latest undeclared war. While some Administration officials are finally calling our attacks in Syria as a “war,” the discomfort over defining this indefinite campaign has led to equal discomfort over naming it. After two months of airstrikes and statements that the campaign will likely go on for years, the Administration still have not named this war. The choice would now seem obvious: Operation Voldemort, the war which must not be named.

Usually, the military loves to give inspiring names to its campaigns, though sometimes the name can reveal a bit of insecurity like “Operation Just Cause” in Panama — a name that only seemed to amplify the questions of the legality or legitimacy of the invasion. Once coined, the name then appears on everything from government contracts to legislation to service medals.read on...

Sunday October 5, 2014

Ukraine, Syria, Iraq, ISIS, Hong Kong — why is the US at war with much of the rest of the world? Why does the government lie to trick so many Americans into backing their impoverishing and dangerous plans? Who is behind this warmongering and why?

Friday October 3, 2014

Israel gives cover and opened a corridor for Jabhat al-Nusra along the Golan height demarcation line to reach south Lebanon and the southern approaches to Damascus.

There seems to be no concern in Tel Aviv that one day Jabhat al-Nusra could turn against Israel too. That is somewhat astonishing as both Hizbullah and Hamas started with Israeli support as counterweights to the Palestinian Liberation Organization only to later become the most capable foes of the Israeli occupation forces. One might have thought that Israeli strategists had learned from such foolishness.read on...

Wednesday October 1, 2014

RPI Director Daniel McAdams is back with Jay Taylor to have a closer look into the topics the mainstream media refuses to cover. Mass graves in part of Ukraine occupied by US-backed regime? Radio silence in the west. US involvement in Hong Kong color revolution? Don't even go there! Listen to McAdams and Taylor for all the news the mainstream does not want you to hear...read on...

Tuesday September 23, 2014

In an attack on Syria that the Obama administration promises will be "ongoing," the first day of US bombs has reportedly left eight civilians dead including three children. Some 33 fighters were reportedly killed, producing a typical but troubling civilian-to-fighter kill ratio. US airstrikes struck inside the city of Raqqa, including residential buildings claimed to be occupied by ISIS. The group has already re-located its heavy weaponry out of the area, however.

The US has also, according to press reports, attacked the newly discovered (by the media at least) "Khorasan" group, touted as even scarier than ISIS and far more terrifying than the relatively tame al-Qaeda. The Pentagon claimed in a statement that this latter group was plotting an “imminent attack... against the United States and western interests.”read on...

Friday September 19, 2014

Penn State University Professor and RPI Academic Board Member Flynt Leverett, as a panel discussion guest this week on CrossTalk on RT, dissected United States President Barack Obama’s “insane” commitment to “never-ending war in the Middle East.” Leverett also addresses the US government’s arming and training of what he calls the “mythical” moderate Syria insurgents.

Leverett ominously concludes that US foreign policy has “helped in a big way to create” the ISIS problem and that now the US government is moving forward “with pseudo-solutions that are only going to make the problem worse.” For example, Leverett warns that further arming so-called moderate Syria insurgents will create more channels through which ISIS will obtain US and other weapons — just as such aid has done since the big US push to overthrow the Syria government began.read on...

Tuesday September 16, 2014

RPI Academic Board Member Lawrence Wilkerson, speaking Monday with Ed Schultz on MSNBC, derided United States government support for “moderate” Syria insurgents, noting that you cannot sort out who you are bombing and who you are arming. Wilkerson, a College of William and Marry professor and former US Army colonel, warns that the so-called moderate Syria insurgents are aligned with ISIS and “like the mujahideen in Afghanistan earlier, they’re going to be turning their weapons at some point against us.”read on...